Wikipedia talk:GLAM/Teylers/Multilingual Challenge

List of articles
The only condition for an article to be valid for the challenge is to have a link to the museum article? --Racso (talk) 05:35, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well... There has to be (obvious) relevance tot the Museum or their collection and a significant improvement of the article. Look under How it works for the complete set of rules. Ciell (talk) 13:52, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * So the only condition will be the link, but the link should be normal on that position (so putting links on non-related articles wont help anybody out). Mvg, Basvb (talk) 18:36, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Question about challenge
I would like to join this project, since I have just created the new article Specimens of Archaeopteryx within the last month and I will be working on expanding it over the course of the next few months. But before I can join, I need to clarify whether this qualifies as a totally "new" article for the purpose of the challenge, because it was originally split from the main Archaeopteryx article's "History of discovery" section, which was growing too long (despite being very incomplete). Thanks. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 19:02, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Welcome! Of course this qualifies - nice work by the way. If you need any information about the Haarlem specimen, you can ask me or post on the collaboration page. I have access to tons of documentation on the paleontological collection, but the writing challenge also has someone working with the the current and ex-curators of all the collections. The story of the Haarlem specimen is pretty interesting and personally I think it needs its own article, but since this is probably true for the other specimens as well, I am still eager to read whatever you come up with. Please do sign up, and if I can help with the history of discovery on any of the other stuff let me know - the Teylers was in correspondence with the American Philosophical Society on a lot of the fossils. Jane (talk) 09:31, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I may end up splitting it into separate articles at the end. A rough vote on the Archaeopteryx talk indicated that people were more interested in seeing a single article for all the specimens, but after I started really working on it and pulling as many reliable sources as I could find, the sections suddenly started getting ridiculously long. So I may well end up with 11 different articles on my hands by the end. I'll let you know if I have any further questions, thanks. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 16:20, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

What is the deadline? --Davidpar (talk) 18:10, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * 31 May 2012. There's still some time;-) Gjjanse (talk) 09:51, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Lessons learned
Thanks to the optimism of Geert Jan and the good-naturedness of all the contestants, this project went well despite a few mistakes and misconceptions. In general, there was not a lot of publicity for the effort on the whole, though a note was included for Wikipedians in their local "village pump" sections and on the Wikipedia:Signpost page.
 * 1) Too much effort went into checking the start quality of the Dutch articles, whereas the international community clearly tended to translate from the English articles. Future multi-lingual challenges would be better off by making sure that the "anchor articles" (for the museum, and the key people for example) are of an acceptable quality in English before the start.
 * 2) The article tracking system on the English Wikipedia is confusing and error prone. Most other Wikipedias do not have this feature, so non-English contributors who create articles on the English Wikipedia don't add the necessary template for tracking. The system is also linked to an assessment construction that just seems too complex. Assessing new articles for this challenge basically meant deciding between "stub" and "start".
 * 3) Most people accustomed to writing in one language Wikipedia have no idea what an interwiki link is, and some effort needs to be made to track down foreign versions of articles and link them in by interwiki. Articles that don't link to the anchor article "Teylers Museum" cannot be counted.
 * 4) Most Wikipedians enjoy editting at home, and even if they live nearby, will not come to an edit-a-thon, preferring to contribute in the comfort of their own home.
 * 5) Articles tend to be picked for translation if they have an image - especially if it's a bio page it helps to have an image. No contest rules were defined for images, but Teylers couldn't release their images of 3-D objects, so the competition was reliant on photos by participants on Wikimedia Commons, who sometimes didn't know how to categorize their work to make it findable.

These are just off the top of my head, and if I think of any more, I will add them in. Jane (talk) 17:29, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Some personal thoughts from me as well:
 * Most online sources were in Dutch. That meant that the non-Dutch speakers were highly dependent on the interests of the few Dutch people that created articles in English. Most likely the topic list would have looked quite differently if sources would have been primarily in English or interests were different.
 * Translating is much easier than creating.
 * There seems to be an optimum of article length between 300 and 600 words - after that it gets tiresome for most people to write, below that it is not so interesting.
 * It is important to have independent sources from the institution. No offence of course, but the biographies by Van der Aa and Van der Willigen were in my feeling doing more justice to the individuals - especially combined with geneological websites for a bit more family background.
 * Although the number of visitors wasn't high, I feel the edithons were successful - especially the one inside Teylers. Ideally the schedule of the day is more clear in advance and there is more time for actual editing, but in general the concept is great. It is especially motivating. The kickoff was also a very Good Thing.
 * effeietsanders 17:35, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I published the complete list (Ok, not exactly complete, but for space I did not include columns for the languages ru/uk/pt/fy/eo) of around 600 articles with 323 unique english titles and click-through links to contributions in other languages here: GLAM/Teylers/Multilingual Challenge/Articles 2012. It would be nice to have a table like this updated weekly from the start of any future challenge to indicate popular articles across languages as a basis for inspiration and as confirmation to participants that the articles they create are available for review by other participants. Jane (talk) 09:39, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
 * It might be a bit to competative but about the translating is easier point: would a solution be to grant the writer of the first (English?) article a point for every translation? Mvg, Basvb (talk) 14:40, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Bas, I like that idea, but I think points should go both ways; i.e. if you create an article, regular points system applies, and if translater A creates the article in another language, both you and translator A get an extra point, and so on. For example, your article on Christian Ulrich would have brought you and your translators more points as it was translated into other languages. This way, translation becomes as interesting as article creation, and it becomes interesting to create articles as early as possible to maximize translation possibilities. Now, back to your idea of giving the initiator the most "credit": you could maybe think of a prize for the articles that get translated the most, as this indicates roughly a degree of importance for the subject. It remains difficult to put a game aspect on it because you want to avoid anybody trying to force the system. What I think we noticed during the competition was that mistakes in the first "version" of an article get translated and stay that way. It would be nice to find a way in which the translated articles stay up to date with each other during the competition. Jane (talk) 15:47, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

evaluation points
Some evaluation points that were identified during the prize ceremony:
 * We need to give more attention for maintaining an overview of all submitted articles, in all languages (in a table). That way it is easy to spot which articles can be translated to which languages. Ideally, including the number of words / an indication for its length.
 * Edit-a-thons:
 * Make sure that it is not merged with bureaucratic-type of discussions, and that there is a focus on the topic. Otherwise the spirit gets quickly destroyed. Talking about Wikimedia politics ensures nobody does an edit. Make sure everyone participating is aware of this.
 * Basically, dedicated purpose, and dedicated time! (so not on a Wiki Saturday or a Wiki Sunday, unless explicitly scheduled that way) - Jane


 * Avoid high expectations - there is only so much one can do in a day, and usually it is less. More important is the positive atmosphere that is established and can continue after the workshop.
 * Make a clear schedule, with enough editing time. Our proposed time schedule would be to start at 10:00 with writing, until 12:30. Lunch for an hour, then a guided tour behind the screens from 13:30 - 14:30 and then editing until 17:00. That leaves people to determine their own day and allows people to build the edithon around their day.
 * Make clear goals and ensure everyone is on the same page. Together one really good article, or many short ones? Number? Topic?
 * Maybe the best way is for people to state beforehand what articles or aspects of Wikipedia they plan to work on. - Jane


 * Have continuous statistics
 * I was wondering about this and the only way to make statistics continuous efficiently is to get the participants to keep them going. Our only statistics were the participation page and it would be nice if changes to this page were in a better table form.


 * Lists of relevant articles are important.
 * Make sure many articles exist in English, so that you have a foundation everyone can work from.
 * Create a nice barnstar (action Jane)
 * I made one a while ago, and maybe we also need a userbox like this:

This uses the front door of the Fundatiehuis, rather than the Museum. Jane (talk) 16:09, 18 June 2012 (UTC) effeietsanders 13:28, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Perhaps also organize a photo session during the workshop, where people can use all the fancy equipment they have.
 * Combining the contest with existing WikiProjects wasn't successful, we haven't found a clear cause yet.
 * Combining real life events with other things is key - it drives participation.
 * Start off with a list of suggested sources. Ideally out of copyright.
 * Avoid overlap with other edithons - that would be disastrous for participation rates.